American Dirt – Jeanine Cummins

When Lydia Perez takes her son, Luca, to the bathroom during her niece Yenifer’s fifteenth birthday celebrations, they avoid a murderous bloodbath that kills the other sixteen extended family members present. The hit, in Acapulco, is the work of the Los Jardineros cartel, ordered by its leader, Javier Crespo Fuentes, in revenge for a press exposé penned by Sebastien Delgardo, Lydia’s husband, Luca’s papi.

It is a shock, but not a surprise, for Lydia who knows what she must do is flee before they too are mopped up. Easier said than done in Mexico when there is a price on your head and the country is controlled by the cartels that have the police in their pockets and operate with impunity, imposing levies on businesses and tolls on the roads.

Lydia and Luca pack a bag, empty the bank account, and run. Safety means leaving the country and the only viable option is the United States. If that means joining the stream of migrants heading to ‘El Norte’, so be it. The best way to travel, they learn, is on top of freight trains, but getting aboard is perilous. As is dodging the cartels, vigilantes, and corrupt border guards who pray on the desperate, keen to extort every last dollar, peso, and sexual favour. Even if they get to the border, a successful crossing requires the expensive services of a ‘coyote’ to find a path through the desert.

Much of the narrative is told in the present tense, giving it immediacy and a heightened sense of peril. Some relief is provided by morsels of the back stories of Lydia and her fellow travellers, though they are no less harrowing for being survived. Lydia’s transformation from middle class bookstore owner to ragged, moneyless refugee is swift and entirely believable. The trials endured by the migrants are both heart stopping and heart wrenching.

Emotional investment in Lydia and Luca is total. Some books cannot be put down; at times this was one I was reluctant to pick up, such was my fear for their wellbeing.

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free – Andrew Miller

Late one dark night, Captain John Lacroix is delivered to his family home, more dead than alive. The chaotic retreat from Corunna, the voyage to Portsmouth, and the overland haul by carriage have left him unconscious and barely recognisable. But not to Nell, the last remaining servant, who makes it her job to bring back to life the man she nursed as a boy. It works, but to Lacroix his recovery is not all good news, a return to his regiment and the Peninsular War is unthinkable. There is a darkness there he could not bear.

In Spain, two military men, a Spanish Lieutenant and a British Corporal, meet at a roughly convened tribunal, held jointly by their respective authorities, allies at least in name. An atrocity has been committed during the British retreat. Corporal Calley can testify to the events; can point the finger at the officer in charge. The Spanish want justice; the British do not want a public shaming; the outcome is a death sentence to be served covertly. Calley is to be the executioner, Lieutenant Medina is to bear witness to the deed.

Back in England, Lacroix is recovered physically but, worried about unspoken events in Spain, decides to make himself scarce. A trip to the Scottish Highlands and Islands to recuperate and study the folk tunes is the excuse, and it is off to Bristol to catch a ship north.

Calley and Medina are not far behind, extracting information on their quarry’s progress by any means, preferably violent. But they travel by land allowing Lacroix to pull ahead. Both hunted and hunters have eventful journeys. When Lacroix ends up on a remote island and falls in with the delightful Frend siblings – Cornelius, Emily, and Anne – he settles easily into their free-thinking community. It is idyllic, with the prospect of romance, but the bounty hunters are closing in.

It is a slow burner that subtly builds plot from hints and things unsaid. The period detail is excellent, and the romantic and violent episodes are equally well handled. Lacroix with his guilt, Calley with his brutality, and Medina with his detachment, make three interesting and contrasting lead characters, providing depth to the narrative.

The climax is tense, and all possibilities remain open to the last. Who will end up free, and what will that freedom entail?

Ariadne – Jennifer Saint

Ariadne’s main claim to fame is the assistance she gave to Theseus in escaping the labyrinth wherein the minotaur dwelt. How the creature got there, why Theseus went in, and what happened when he got out is a good tale, a classic Greek myth in which Ariadne plays a bit part. But in Saint’s novel, Ariadne takes centre stage, princess daughter of king Minos of Crete, who sells out her father’s kingdom and throws her lot in with Theseus and Athens. No spoilers, but let’s just say it doesn’t turn out well, at least initially.

Saint fleshes out Ariadne’s story, and that of her younger sister, Phaedra. They mix in exalted company; in addition to Theseus, the god Dionysus, genius inventor Daedalus, Amazonian scion Hippolytus, and rival hero Perseus all pop up, along with their back stories.

Between the godly and heroic deeds of the menfolk, Ariadne and Phaedra flip flop between adoration of their physique and contempt of their attitude to women. The new lover always seems to promise different, better, but turns out just the same.

Being Greek, we expect it to end tragically for most, only the gods get off Scot free. The prose is pitched between modern and archaic and makes for an unchallenging read.

If putting Ariadne centre stage was meant to be a feminist statement, I am not sure it works. She is rather passive, Phaedra less so, and both remain defined by their romantic attachments and domestic circumstances. This is perhaps why the Greek myths have little to say of the women. There is, however, a lot of moaning about a woman’s lot and whinging about men in general and heroes in particular.

The Appeal – Janice Hallett

Roderick Tanner QC presents a file of information to two of his students, Olufemi Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd, with the challenge ‘see what you think’.

The collection of recovered e-mails, text messages, transcripts, and assorted printed material is incomplete but in rough chronological order. At the heart of the correspondence, initially, are the plans of the Fairway Players for their next amateur production, which will be Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.

The Players are led by the wealthy Hayward family. Patriarch Martin is chair and director in chief; his wife, Helen, is secretary and perennial leading lady. Their son, James, and daughter, Paige, both take key roles. Of the rest of the group, Sarah Jane MacDonald is to the fore as a serial organiser and favoured gofer, while Isabel Beck is no more than a willing wannabe.

However, for this production, events off stage are distracting the Haywards. James’ wife is expecting twins, and news has broken that Paige’s daughter, Poppy, is seriously ill with a rare form of cancer. Expensive private treatment abroad offers her best hope. The Players respond by setting up a funding appeal, the proceeds of All My Sons will be donated and further events are planned.

Despite all this, the show must go on. And Issy Beck introduces some new blood into the cast – new arrivals and health workers like her, Samantha and Kel Greenwood.

Events unfold. Olufami and Charlotte periodically exchange notes, which help to keep track of the complex relationships revealed by the file, and Tanner drops in the odd additional nugget to help them (and us) along. The students realise this case is for real, not an exercise. Someone has been convicted of murder, and Tanner is working on an appeal.

It makes for compulsive reading as message follows message, unfolding events that go well beyond the play. The plotting is deceptively complex with sufficient misleads and blind alleys to keep the solution to the murder hidden in plain sight.

It is an unusual vehicle for a whodunnit but one that works very well.

The Dying Day – Vaseem Khan

The bookpacking journey arrives in the subcontinent, albeit seventy years ago when Mumbai was known by a different name

Bombay 1950: post-war, post-independence, post-partition, and the scars remain, as do a raft of white men, hanging on with their colonial attitudes. But Persis Wadia is a symbol of the new India, its first female police inspector, complete with uniform and gun. Not that she wants to be a symbol, she just wants to get on with the job of solving crimes and serving justice.

The case looks simple enough, a missing British academic – John Healey – and a missing rare book he was working on – an early edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It turns out to be nothing like simple as Healey has left a trail of cryptic clues, riddles, and puzzles. The hardest question is why has he bothered? Particularly when he turns up dead quite early in the chase.

Persis tackles the case with ingenuity and dogged determination, picking the brains of experts and drawing on the resources of her father’s bookshop. She also has the assistance, and close attention, of Archie Blackfinch, forensic criminologist on loan from the English Police. He is one of few who don’t treat her as a curiosity. She appreciates that and likes him – but it is complicated. He is white, which does not sit well with her anti-colonial views

As Persis criss-crosses Bombay seeking answers, the backdrop is brought to life with interesting historical nuggets about the buildings and the people of her city, some relevant, some not. Her character – spiky and flawed (a necessity for fictional detectives) – is nevertheless appealing, and we root for her as the investigation spirals into unexpected territory.

Once the artificiality of laying a convoluted trail of clues is parked, the chase is engrossing and pacey. There are enough sub-plots involving professional jealousies, a fractious family, and a previous boyfriend to add variety. And though the minor characters remain that way, that of Persis is strong enough to carry the book.

This is the second book in the series featuring Persis’ police career, and I could be tempted to sample the first, “Midnight at Malabar House”.

Things in Jars – Jess Kidd

It begins (though it has long since began) with the abduction of a girl (if it is a girl) from Maris House, ancestral home of Sir Edmund Berwick, baronet. Also missing is the child’s nurse, Miss Bibby; has she been taken too, or did she do the taking?

Mrs Bride Devine is engaged to investigate. Private investigation is one of several strings to her bow, along with minor surgery (esp. Boils, Warts, Extractions) and the occasional consultancy for Police Inspector Valentine Rose. Bridie works alone, supported at home by her seven foot tall housemaid, Cora Butter, and in the current case by newly acquired, insubstantial, assistant, the ghost of Ruby Doyle, tattooed seafarer and champion boxer (deceased). Bride does not believe in ghosts but doesn’t let that stop her discussing the case with Ruby, nor of developing affection for him.

The book moves forward in two timelines: the current (1863) where Bridie soon gets on the trail of the abductors; and the past (1841) that tells of nine-year-old Bridie’s purchase (for a guinea) and training as apprentice by Dr Joshua Eames, physician and collector of jars of unusual specimens.

No spoilers here. It all moves forward splendidly with spells of tension, action, and reflection, set in an atmospherically seedy London both wary and dismissive of a female dabbling in medicine and detection. The prose is unhurried, delivering measured portions of gothic locations, colourful characters, and twisting plot. The resolution is uncertain to the end, but credible and satisfying (though Ruby Doyle remains an enigma).

There is a hint of a sequel, which would be welcome.

Mayflies – Andrew O’Hagan

The summer of 1986, James is eighteen, between school and university and unencumbered by parents having responded to their separation by ‘divorcing’ them from his life. Instead, he dips into his friend Tully’s family life. Tully’s ambition is shaped by his father – he wants to be nothing like him, crushed by Thatcherism and still sulking.

Where Tully leads, others follow, and this summer that will be to Manchester for a music festival celebrating ten years since the Sex Pistols played the Free Trade Hall. Friends - Tibbs, Limbo, and Hogg - come on board and soon the five of them are heading south on the bus from industrial Ayrshire to sample the delights that 1980’s Manchester holds for those into their music: The International, Piccadilly Records, The Hacienda, and the GMex Festival.

It is an innocently hedonistic weekend of music, drinking, drugs, and women (if not sex). I was in Manchester in the 80’s, but a decade too old for that scene, which means for me the references to groups, songs, and drugs are obscure and frankly interchangeable. Not that it matters, you still get the drift – youth at one of its magic moments, ending sat on the roof of the YMCA with the city spread out below.

From that night the book skips thirty years. The boys have gone their separate ways but remain in contact, so it is no surprise for James to get a phone call from Tully. The shock comes with the news that his friend is seriously ill and needs to ask a favour.

The book is a perceptive portrayal of male friendship at both ends of adulthood. It is full of contrasts: the feelings of invulnerability in youth and mortality in age; the love of life and the poignancy of realising its limits; the joy of friendship and the pain of letting it go that sometimes requires selflessness.

The first half is written with great joie de vivre; the second half with heart-wringing sensitivity. All well worth the emotional investment.